He didn’t just remember his grief, he relearned it. For several minutes he sat on the couch, slumped forward, arms angled out in anticipation of his rise. Paralyzed with sorrow. Unable to bear a single movement. He focused on his breathing. If he could draw three breaths, then he’d be able to draw three more, and life could go on as such, in three-breath increments.
Finally he mustered the strength to stand. Walking back to the shower, he tried not to think about his daughter’s theatrical heaviness when he carried her along this same path from TV to bedroom at night. Her head tilted back, eyes squeezed shut, tongue stuck out the side of her mouth like a drunk cartoon character’s. Trying to steal a few extra minutes of tube time by feigning sleep.
In daylight her death had taken on a reality. It lived in the house with them, in the dust on the floors, the blankness of the ceilings, the soft, unanswered noises of his movement past her room.
After a scorching shower, he dressed and walked back to the kitchen.
Dray sat at the table, sipping coffee, her eyes swollen, her hair flat on one side. The cordless phone sat on the table beside her. “Well,” she said, “I just got off the phone with the DA. It looks like you guys didn’t screw up the case against Kindell.”
“Good. That’s good.”
They studied each other for a moment. She held her arms out like a child wanting to be hugged, and Tim walked into her embrace. She buried her head in his stomach, and he scrunched her hair in the back. She groaned.
He slid down into the chair next to her.
Black half-moons stood out beneath her eyes. “Motherfucking asshole prick cocksucking goddamned fucked-up pile of miserable shit,” she said.
“Yeah,” Tim said.
“They have Kindell at county. He’s got three priors-a weenie wagger and two lewd acts with a minor. All girls under the age of ten. Three slaps on the wrist. Last time out he pled. Judge found him not guilty by reason of insanity. NGI bought him a year and a half at Patton, padded walls and warm food.” She spoke quickly, getting it out.
“And the case?”
“He completely clammed up at the station-wouldn’t talk no matter how hard they pressed-but there’s evidence all over his little shack. They got a blood match this A.M. from the…from the hacksaw…” She leaned over and gagged, her spine arching through twodry heaves.
Tim held her hair back gently, but she brought nothing up. She shoved herself upright in her chair, wiped her mouth, gave a great, halting exhale, then it was back to business. “The DA’s hammering him, filing special circumstances. The arraignment’s tomorrow.” She spun her coffee mug, then spun it again.
“We still have an accomplice out there who they need to track down.”
“Someone in on the kill who knew how to cover his tracks in ways Kindell didn’t.”
“Or a partnership gone bad, or a double-cross.”
“Or, as the DA seems to think, it was just Kindell in his truck, Ginny walking to Tess’s, and bad goddamned timing.”
“He’s not looking into this?”
“She assured me personally her office would continue to explore the possibility, but she doesn’t seem hot on it.”
“Why not?”
“A high-visibility case, a neat little package as it stands. And I’m sure Gutierez and Harrison are none too eager to spend sweat probing your leads.”
Tim considered the dried weeds outside Kindell’s, the soft dirt that could have borne footprints or the marks of a second set of tire tracks. He thought of all the traffic through there-him and Bear included-before CSU was called, obscuring evidence, polluting the scene. Guilt felt weightier heaped on top of intense sorrow.
“I keep thinking I’ll have to make arrangements. Like they always say.” Her face contorted as if she were going to sob, though she didn’t.
Tim poured himself a cup of coffee, focusing on the task, trying for a numb moment.
“Remember at the department picnic, when she was four?”
“Don’t,” Tim said.
“She was wearing that yellow-checked dress your aunt sent. A plane went overhead. She asked what it was. And you told her it was an airplane, and that people were up there flying in it.”
“Don’t.”
“And she looked up at it, gauged its size with a chubby little thumb, and do you remember what she said? ‘No way,’ she said. ‘They’d never fit.’” A tear tracked down Dray’s cheek. “Her hair was curly back then. I remember it like I could touch it.”
The doorbell rang, and Tim rose to answer it, grateful for the disruption. On the doorstep stood Mac, Fowler, Gutierez, Harrison, and a few other deputies from the bar last night. They all had their hats off, like salesmen feigning deference.
“Uh, Rack, we…” Fowler cleared his throat hard. He smelled of coffee and stale booze. He seemed to catch himself. “Is Dray here, too?”
Tim felt a tug at the back belt loop of his jeans. Dray went up on tiptoe and rested her chin on his shoulder.
Fowler nodded at her, then continued. “We all wanted to apologize. For in the bar. And earlier, too. It was a, uh, a real tough night for us all-not near as hard as for you, I know, but we’re also not used to…Anyways, we were way out of line at a time when you least needed it, and uh, well…”
Gutierez picked up for him. “We’re ashamed.”
“We’re on it now,” Harrison said. “The case. Full force.”
“If there’s anything we can do…” Mac said.
“Thank you,” Tim said. “I appreciate you coming by.”
They shuffled around a bit, then moved forward one at a time to shake Tim’s hand. It was a foolish, formal little ceremony, but Tim found it a moving one nonetheless. Dray held him from behind, trembling slightly.
The deputies headed back down the walk, and then the patrol cars pulled out one after the other. Tim and Dray watched the procession until the last car faded from sight.
The next forty-eight hours passed tediously and painfully, like a jagged kidney stone. Every action was weighty and frightful, full of hidden turns and dark corners. Calling family members and friends. Trying to get Ginny’s body released from the coroner. Receiving updates on the case the DA was preparing against Kindell. Even the smallest tasks left Tim and Dray drenched in exhaustion.
Kindell, understandably reticent about staying in custody, refused to waive time, demanding a prompt prelim. Dray learned that the public defender had filed a 1538 motion to suppress evidence. She hit the roof and called the DA’s office but was assured that the motion was not meritorious, that PDs filed them prophylactically all the time to keep appellate lawyers off their asses down the line. It wasn’t the worst thing that the PD was touching all the bases; he had a reputation for being a loose cannon, and the last thing they wanted was Kindell filing an Ineffective Assistance of Counsel Writ after the trial.
The phone rang constantly with calls from investigators, well-wishers, press, its jangle an unnerving marching-band tune for the parade of tin-foil-covered plates and eyes crinkled with sympathy. But despite the traumatizing details and petty tortures, the days were defined by a maddening eventlessness, all sound and fury and little advancement, like running on ice.
The incessant hammering of grief and stress left Tim and Dray with tattered and few resources. Though they tried to comfort each other, to embrace, to mourn together, their pain seemed amplified by the other’s distress and their own uselessness in the face of it. They both found themselves increasingly wrapped in their own private pain, unable to muster the strength to pull themselves out of it.
They began keeping a respectful distance from each other, like roommates. They napped frequently, though always separately, and they rarely ate, despite the array of filled Tupperware that packed their refrigerator, replenished almost hourly by neighbors and friends. When they did interact, it was in brief, overpolite exchanges, parodies of domesticity. The sight of Dray elicited in Tim a piercing shame that he was unable to be more for her right now. He knew that in his face Dray saw reflected back only the same devastation that weighed down hers.